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110776 bk Moisei 28/09/2004 09:51am Page 4 Ward Marston ADD In 1997 Ward Marston was nominated for the Best Historical Album Grammy Award for his production work on Great Pianists • Moiseiwitsch 8 BMG’s Fritz Kreisler collection. According to the Chicago Tribune, Marston’s name is ‘synonymous with tender 8.110776 loving care to collectors of historical CDs’. Opera News calls his work ‘revelatory’, and Fanfare deems him ‘miraculous’. In 1996 Ward Marston received the Gramophone award for Historical Vocal Recording of the Year, honouring his production and engineering work on Romophone’s complete recordings of Lucrezia Bori. He also served as re-recording engineer for the Franklin Mint’s Arturo Toscanini issue and BMG’s Sergey Rachmaninov recordings, both winners of the Best Historical Album Grammy. Born blind in 1952, Ward Marston has amassed tens of thousands of opera classical records over the past four BEETHOVEN decades. Following a stint in radio while a student at Williams College, he became well-known as a reissue producer in 1979, when he restored the earliest known stereo recording made by the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1932. Piano Concerto In the past, Ward Marston has produced records for a number of major and specialist record companies. Now he is bringing his distinctive sonic vision to bear on works released on the Naxos Historical label. Ultimately his No. 3 goal is to make the music he remasters sound as natural as possible and true to life by ‘lifting the voices’ off his old 78 rpm recordings. His aim is to promote the importance of preserving old recordings and make available the works of great musicians who need to be heard. Piano Concerto Producer’s Note No. 5 All of Benno Moiseiwitsch’s 78rpm discs were recorded in England and released on HMV’s domestic series. Because of the pianist’s immense popularity in Australia and America, some of his records were also issued by Australian HMV and American Victor, both of whom produced superior pressings to those manufactured in Benno England. For the past twenty-five years, I have been on the lookout for such pressings and have used them in this series of compact discs wherever possible. For this volume, I was fortunate in locating extremely fine Victor Moiseiwitsch pressings for the Beethoven Emperor Concerto recording which yield quieter surfaces than the original English HMV set. No filtering or computerized noise reduction has been employed so as not to compromise Moiseiwitsch’s lovely tone. I have only used a slight application of the CEDAR de-clicking algarythm for the removal of obtrusive Philharmonia Orchestra ticks and pops. The recording of Beethoven’s third concerto was transferred from the tape source and not the 78rpm dubbings. Sir Malcolm Sargent London Philharmonic Orchestra George Szell Historical Recordings 1938 and 1950 8.110776 4 110776 bk Moisei 28/09/2004 09:51am Page 2 Great Pianists: Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963), Volume 8 some upper notes not being struck cleanly. Film of Liszt’s Feux Follets and the Tarantella from Venezia e BEETHOVEN: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 5 Moiseiwitsch playing the Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Napoli. The following day Moiseiwitsch was at the Overture for the BBC shows this octave technique Kingsway Hall in London to record Beethoven’s Piano Benno Moiseiwitsch was born in ‘the cradle of Russian Borowsky and César Franck’s Prelude, Aria and perfectly. The complaint about the ‘feeble’ sound Concerto No. 5 in E flat, Op. 73, the Emperor pianism’ Odessa, in 1890. At the age of nine he won Fugue arranged for orchestra by Vittorio Gui. Marjory quality may have something to do with the fact that the Concerto. The sessions went extremely well with first the Anton Rubinstein prize, and after being told by the M. Fisher wrote in the San Francisco News, ‘With rare performance was recorded onto tape by HMV, and the takes being approved for each of the ten sides except Guildhall School of Music in London that they could dignity and poise of demeanour, minus any physical 78rpm discs were dubbed from that tape. one. Three days later on 24th October, Moiseiwitsch teach him nothing, he went, at the age of fourteen, to contortions or unnecessary movements, Mr Later in that year of 1950, at the London performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Vienna where he studied with the great teacher Moiseiwitsch played superbly and proved a veritable Promenade Concerts, Myra Hess played Beethoven’s major, Op. 58, at the Queen’s Hall again with George Theodore Leschetizky. At first Leschetizky told the aristocrat of the keyboard…..One has rarely heard such Piano Concerto No. 3 and Moiseiwitsch played Szell conducting. It is a pity that no recording of young Benno that he could play better with his feet, but a command of tone colouring demonstrated by a Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat, Op. 73, the Moiseiwitsch in the Fourth Concerto of Beethoven young Benno was undeterred and spent nearly two keyboard artist’. Many critics commented on the Emperor Concerto, with Basil Cameron and the exists. A contemporary reviewer of the recording of the years in Vienna perfecting his art with the great master. quality of the slow movement as played by London Philharmonic Orchestra. He had, however, Emperor wrote of ‘the natural ping of the particular His British début was in Reading in 1908 and his Moiseiwitsch. Marie Hicks Davidson wrote in the San recorded the work for HMV twelve years earlier in technical method employed by this very efficient international career took him to every corner of the Francisco Call Bulletin, ‘Moiseiwitsch’s best pianism October 1938. pianist, who is not my ideal as a Beethovenian…..There world. – all above par – was in the Largo, done in slow pace During June and July of 1938 Moiseiwitsch made a is in the first movement too little variety of tone levels: At sixty years of age Moiseiwitsch continued a and with legato passages of poignant beauty’. In May tour of Jamaica and South America. Returning to too much of the passage-work and connective tissue gruelling schedule of recitals and concerto appearances he gave a concert in Paris and then returned to Britain Britain, he gave three performances at the London goes in a straight line. I find very little to stir me here’. throughout the world, a schedule he had undertaken for to give concerts in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh Promenade Concerts with the conductor Henry Wood. True, Szell conducts in his usual fashion of the the previous thirty years. He spent the first three and Glasgow. At the Glasgow concert Moiseiwitsch On 11th August he played Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on martinet, but the criticisms seem totally unfounded. It months of 1949 touring America playing in played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C a theme of Paganini, Op. 43 (which had only been must be remembered that we are hearing these Philadelphia, Kansas, New York, New Orleans, minor, Op. 18, and a few days later he went to HMV’s written four years before) and Liszt’s Piano Concerto recordings in sound far superior to anything that would Orlando, Memphis, Norfolk Virginia, Philadelphia, Abbey Road Studios for the second of only two No. 1 in E flat. On 3rd September he played have been heard at the time. Moiseiwitsch, one of the Washington, St. Louis, Des Moines, Los Angeles and recording sessions that year to record Beethoven’s Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, great pianists of the twentieth century, can easily rise San Francisco. He continued on to Toronto, Montreal Third Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Op. 44, and on 24th September Rachmaninov’s Piano above such pernickety criticism. The Emperor was the and Mexico City. After spending the summer of 1949 Malcolm Sargent. Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, whilst October 1st work he performed in London in March 1963 at his in Britain he was back in the United States performing Gramophone reviewer Andrew Porter hated the and 16th saw him giving two broadcasts for the BBC, in final public appearance, and in our era when we have in places such as Milwaukee, Chicago, Kansas City HMV recording when he reviewed it in April 1952. one playing the 24 Preludes, Op. 28, of Chopin. On the the luxury of being able to hear both performances by and Washington. Referring to it as ‘a second-rate affair’ he wrote, afternoon of 20th October he gave a recital at Ryde on such an artist, criticism seems unwarranted. In January and February of 1950 Moiseiwitsch was ‘…There are some nice moments in Moiseiwitsch’s the Isle of Wight which included Beethoven’s playing in Cincinnati, Montreal, Miami, Orlando, playing, poetical touches, but as a whole the Pathétique Sonata, Op. 13, Schumann’s Etudes Boston, Toronto and New York. In March he played in interpretation is shallow. The cadenza of the first Symphoniques, Op. 13, some Chopin, Albéniz, and © 2004 Jonathan Summers Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Fresno and San movement has what must surely be the worst run of Francisco, and whilst conductor Pierre Monteux had a wrong notes ever recorded. Sir Malcolm hardly begins week’s holiday, the baton of the San Francisco to scratch the surface of the music…..The recording of Symphony Orchestra was taken up by a young Leonard this set is feeble and unlife-like’. Was Porter listening Bernstein. Monteux, however, returned to conduct to the same recording? Moiseiwitsch plays the first Moiseiwitsch and the orchestra in a performance of movement cadenza by Carl Reinecke, and perhaps the one of the concertos Moiseiwitsch was playing on his passage Porter is referring to is the octave passage tour, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.

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